Combating COVID-19: Bangladesh Perspective

Saifur Rahman Saif

Hotchpotch is my favourite food. But hotchpotch in service is not good, rather more than bad. In combating COVID -19, hotchpotch is seen everywhere in Bangladesh.

Theft of relief materials by ruling Awami League men has become a regular phenomenon in the country. Shortage of testing kits for COVID -19 is another problem.

American national Sally Dugman, who is noted writer, in an email to me expressed her deep concern about the matter.

In her email, sent about a week back, wrote – I read a few weeks ago data about different ways that different countries are equipped or not so to confront Covid-19. I was appalled that your country was at the utmost bottom of the list with only ten virus test kits for every one hundred thousand people of whom many of those thousands may need the test.

This being the case made me angry and very sad. In fact, I find this condition intolerable since it, obviously, is, she continued.

Professor Dr Anwar Hossain, vice-chancellor, Jashore University of Science and Technology, who leads a folk of researchers to test COVID -19 cases, also expressed his worry about the matter to me. `We’ll not be able to continue tests of COVID -19 if kits are not supplied in time,’ he told me on Wednesday.

The university, in its laboratory, has already been tested over 250 samples since April 17, after having government’s approval for testing of pandemic COVID- 19, the VC informed me.

Noted virologist Nazrul Islam told New Age, a popular newspaper, ‘though six weeks have passed since the first confirmed case, we are still in the dark about the prevalence and trend of the infection due to unorganised testing methods.’

‘It is still unpredictable about when the country will reach the peak of infections due to the faulty method and low number of tests,’ he told New Age.

10 more people died of COVID-19 and 390 more got infected with the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours till 8:00am on Wednesday.

With the new figures, the death toll rose to 120 and the number of infections rose to 3,772, said Directorate General of Health Services additional director general Nasima Sultana in the daily bulletin on COVID-19 situation, New Age reported.

I saw folks of people at several places outside their residences across the country although the country is enjoying a lockdown.

Jobayer Hossain, assistant teacher, Government BL College in Khulna divisional town described the folk as a fair like gathering.

Trader Selim Hossain told that he did not observe social or physical distancing at market places in Nawapara industrial town in bordering Jashore district.

KM Rafiqul Islam, executive magistrate and also assistant commissioner, in -charge of Abhaynagar land office, however, told me that the mobile court was trying hard to maintain social distancing.

The Guardian reported that the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research said that it had recorded a total of 3,772 cases so far.

With a population of 160 million, including close to 1 million Rohingya refugees, but with reportedly just 1,100 intensive care beds, Bangladesh is apparently ill-prepared for the Covid-19 outbreak, according to The Guardian.

In these circumstances, stranded foreigners are being taken to their countries by special aircrafts.

Left Democratic Alliance had handed over a memorandum to the deputy commissioner of Jashore on Wednesday describing famine like situation at the area, asking the government to come forward with appropriate supports. But the situation says the government is unable to do that. I cannot think the reality about the days to come. The world should come forward to contain it at that time. But it’ll not a wise decision, if the first world countries really want to do so, they should do it now.

‘Republic of hunger’ in the Time of ‘Lockdown’

Shashi Kant Tripathi

When some media outlets reported about starvation of the stranded workers during the lockdown due to the coronavirus, several other heartbreaking incidents came to light. 39 year old Ranveer Singh died midway as he walked from Delhi to Morena in MP. He was a delivery boy in a Delhi restaurant and left the capital because there was no social and economic security left after everything was shut. This poignant case is just one example of deaths which could have been completely avoided, that happened not because of the virus, but because of the not-so-thought-out, unplanned lockdown.

Millions of peoples who were worked in the gig economy now are unemployed. Since these jobs are not permanent, workers don’t have any provision of monthly income or social security related to labour laws. More than 90 percent of the workforce in India is working in the ‘informal’ sector. The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 and the Code on Social Security, 2019 are unable to protect their livelihood. Moreover, millions of ‘street children’ and homeless people are living on the roads without any considerations or adequate provisions. Wherever they are ‘dealt’ with, they are stuffed together in huge numbers without any guarantee of food and hygiene. When Prime minister Narendra Modi announced the three (now five) weeks lockdown, his government did not think about informal sector workers, street children and homeless people. Although the main argument of government on lockdown is to save lives and control the pandemic, in reality, out of sheer negligence, it left certain sections to starve and even die.

As per the Global Hunger Report 2019, India’s position in the index is 102 out of 117 countries. Neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh are better than India in this index. The portion of undernourished in the population is 14.5 percent. 37.9 percent children under five years are stunted and 20.8 percent children under 5 year are wasted. Another serious food related issue is anaemia. More than 50 percent of women and children are struggling with anaemia. Another study regarding diet related deaths by Lancet shows 310 deaths per one lakh in 2017. In 2016, 28.1 percent of the total deaths are caused by cardiovascular diseases.  Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading cause for deaths due to lack of a complete diet. According to the National Sample Survey, 68 percent population of rural India are not able to access 2200 calories(benchmark nutritional norms to define poverty) in 2011-12 and 65 percent of the urban population are not able to consume 2100 calories in same year. This data shows that India’s condition is bad as it is and that lockdown will only worsen the health condition of people further.

Availability of food is another pertinent problem in India. Per person food absorption has been declining slowly after economic reforms in the country. Data of the Ministry of Agriculture and Family welfare shows that the net availability of food grains per person per year was 177.9 kg in 2016 while 186.2 percent in 1991. While, in 2015, China and Bangladesh’s food availability per capita were 450 kg and 200 kg respectively. This picture is alarming for healthcare in India. Utsa Patnaik, in her article “ The Republic of Hunger” (2004), stated that “this country with was once a developing economy, but which has been turned into the Republic of Hunger.”

The stock of foodgrains in central pool till December 2019 was 564 metric ton. This highlights the incompetency and more importantly, a lack of will of the government to not distribute available  food grains to its population. As Jean Dreze writes, “how would you feel if a family were to let its weakest members starve, even as the House’s granary is full to the brim.” He stressed the need for the central government to unlock the godowns and supply food to the States. Although there are some measures like food distribution by state governments, disbursal of Rs. 500 to 4.07 crore women as ‘ex-gratia’ in PMJDY account holders, these are not sufficient to tackle the hunger related problems.  Quoting Utsa Patnaik, “When as a ground reality, the incidence of hunger rises, a ‘denial mode’ amongst those who govern and amounts those who are associated with making or influencing policy… is common as to be expected.”

Already, India is struggling with severe hunger problems, the lockdown will push further deprivation amongst the people. Workers think that they will die of hunger before the virus kills them. While historically, hunger and poverty has been used as tools of ‘disciplining’ a population, civil society as an institution to criticise policies and demand rectification also has its hand tied because of the lockdown. Most media outlets are far from responsible journalism and are busy communalising the pandemic. Workers are scattered, scrambling to make ends meet and there is literally no way for activists to come out and protest against the enormity of injustice with the poor.

For the sake of saying, the virus does not discriminate between people, but in reality, it does. To begin with, it was a rich man’s disease that has now been passed on to the poor who lack the strength to fight it, both physically, and financially. People who are daily wage labourers and barely manage two square meals a day are incapable of stocking ration and supplies so that they can sit at home and practice social distancing norms (most of them, not ironically, do not even have homes).

A decent life is a fundamental right of the people. But the government is leaving the masses to think that even ‘survival’ is a privilege. If India doesn’t want to label the death of these workers as ‘collateral damage’, the government must ensure universal nutritious food for all and also ensure minimum income for majority whereby people can purchase non-food essentials. Only ‘cards’ based ration cannot solve the problem of hunger in India. What is urgently required is the politicisation of the issue of hunger, otherwise, through neglect and unsound policies, the government will lead large sections of its own population to death.

Rural Women Respond To Covid-19 With Great Enterprise

Moin Qazi

The COVID-19 crisis has spurred an entrepreneurial wave across the country. Rural women, particularly the farmers among them, have also jumped on board. They are, in fact, better placed to cope with the pandemic as their own uncertain lives pose every day challenges and keep testing their resilience. They carry the greater burden of nature’s cruelties and also have the emotional range to come up with amazing responses.

Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) has been one of the front rank nonprofits training rural women in the drought-prone Marathwada belt of Maharashtra to adopt climate-smart and drought-resistant farm practices. These women are now stewards of a new revolution that is resurrecting traditional farming and reviving time-honoured knowledge that has sustained these communities over centuries.

Many of these women saw COVID-19 as an opportunity to scale their work and use their insights to prepare their communities for the long battle ahead and to steer them through the impending food crisis.

Here are a few stories from villages in Maharashtra where women are serving as beacons in the smog that envelopes the hinterland.

Cultivating nutrition gardens during the #COVID19 Pandemic

Jijabai is an Arogya Sakhi from Madki village in Nanded district. With her training on nutrition gardening, she grows her own vegetables and fruits. She has empowered other women with her example to start their own gardens. Today, these kitchen gardens are helping families cope with the hunger crisis.

Arogya Sakhis, Self Help Groups (SHGs) and Community leaders, in partnership with Swayam Shikshan Prayog and government front-line workers, are helping vulnerable families in rural villages by creating awareness about crucial aspects like prevention, hygiene, social distancing, combating stigma and providing dry food and hygiene essentials.

Families in our village are aware about the seriousness of COVID-19, says Geeta Chavan 

Geeta Chavan is working in Mohtarwadi village in Osmanabad district as a Community Resource Person (CRP) with Swayam Shikshan Prayog. She works with the Gram Panchayat in her village as a leader. She has been creating awareness about pre and post safety measures for the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the support and contribution from her Mahila Shetkari Gat (Women’s Agriculture Group) members, she collected grains and vegetables for the neediest families. The group also collected funds from big farmers in her village and distributed them to over 80 families. The members also stitch masks for free distribution.

Leadership is the key to success, says Priya Khot

 

The nationwide lockdown paralyzed the life of the poor, making daily survival difficult. Panchincholi is one such village in Latur District, Maharashtra.

“Why aren’t people coming to help the poor?” asks Priya Khot, a Community Resource Person of Swayam Shikshan Prayog from Panchincholi village, who gave her PDS-allocated food items to three poor families as a sign of solidarity. Motivated by Priya’s action, 14 women from Mahila Shetkari Gat (Women’s Agriculture Group) came forward and mobilized food for 25 poor families. Priya runs a flour mill and provides free service so everyone in the village can grind wheat flour on the 15th and 16th of every month.

A training on mask-making was provided by Bhagyashree Mahila Griha Udyog, an NGO in Nilanga. Priya came back to her community and trained six women in mask-making. The group made 600 masks that are being collected by the NGO for distribution. When Panchincholi Gram Panchayat Sarpanch, Mr. Shrikant Salunkhe noticed Priya’s commitment and actions, he recommended the neighbouring Panchayat to use her skills in community mobilization and relief effort for COVID-19.

“I was so shy to go out and meet people. The changes came over me when I started getting involved in SHG meetings and become a Community Resource Person,” she says. Priya is overwhelmed with the response and recognition she has received. She has encouraged CRPs in neighbouring villages to work with the communities and support the gram panchayat.

“I am proud of what I am doing. Panchayat and community has shown me respect and I must give it back to my community,” says Priya Khot.

Selfless in the times of crisis…

 

Work-from-home has hit the widows – and their children – in Marathwada the most. They had lost their daily wage jobs and small businesses faced closure.

In the neighbouring district of Solapur, 20 widows in Boramani village had no one to look to. They would lose their dignity if they asked their neighbours for financial aid. Seeing their plight, Usha Gurav urged the members of her Self Help Group to step in. She said: “Wasn’t mutual aid the reason why we formed this group?” She motivated her group to dig into their precious savings in order to support 20 widows. In the presence of their Panchayat, the SHG procured and distributed 50 grocery kits, enough to feed over 200 people.

Unstoppable, these female leaders went on to help the Panchayat to look after migrants who have traveled back home empty-handed. “They are not outsiders, they are, after all, our people,” says Usha about villagers who have returned from various cities during the lockdown. Needless to say, these rural women have shown what it means to stay strong and kind in a global crisis.

Renewed Ebola outbreak threatens the Congo as COVID-19 spreads

Anthony Torres

Already afflicted by a growing COVID-19 pandemic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has seen three new Ebola cases including two deaths in recent weeks, marking a resurgence of the Ebola epidemic. A catastrophe threatens millions not only in the DRC but across central Africa.

In the city of Béni in eastern DRC, one of the epicenters of the Ebola epidemic that broke out on August 1, 2018 and that has claimed 2,276 victims, a child died of hemorrhagic fever on April 10. Two days later, a 26-year-old man died of the same causes. According to a communiqué on the Multi-region Committee on Fighting the Ebola Virus, “it was a co-patient of the case confirmed on April 10.”

The number of people sickened with Ebola could rise rapidly and threaten to relaunch the epidemic, as health authorities have already identified 28 contacts of the new Ebola patient, “including 26 co-patients and two health service providers, one of whom is vaccinated.” Health authorities also reported the World Health Organization (WHO) was preparing Monday to officially announce the end of this 10th Ebola epidemic in the DRC. There had been no new cases of Ebola in the last 52 days.

(Image Credit: World Health Organization/S. Hawkey)

Along with the renewed threat from Ebola, Africa is being overtaken by the COVID-19 pandemic. The DRC now has 359 cases and 25 deaths, primarily in the capital, Kinshasa. Inside the ruling elite, associates of President Félix Tshisekedi have tested positive and others have died, including one task officer of the presidency, Jacques Ilunga. On April 15, Bishop Gérard Mulumba, the paternal uncle of Tshisekedi and head of his civilian cabinet, also died of COVID-19.

According to the state committee on fighting COVID-19, “the COVID-19 pandemic is entering into an exponential growth phase in the city-region of Kinshasa. … The high point of this growth will be reached between the first and second weeks of the month of May. In this period, we must expect rapid arrivals of patients in health authorities that will likely be overrun. If the current preparation efforts are not finalized in time, we must expect the worst.”

In the capital, a city of 12 million inhabitants, the La Gombe neighborhood—the epicenter of the pandemic within the DRC—has been on lockdown since April 6. However, in neighboring districts like Lingwala, Bandalungwa, Kintambo and Ngaliema, no measures have been taken.

The committee fighting COVID-19 reported that it “noted that social distancing measures are totally disrespected and fears that there will be intense human-to-human transmission of the virus in the critical period that is opening in the coming weeks.” It recommended “obligatory wearing of masks by everyone in all public spaces, and especially in mass transit and marketplaces,” as well as “extending confinement measures to districts located next to La Gombe.”

However, masks remain difficult to obtain in DRC, as in neighboring countries. In Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, wearing masks is mandatory; however, aware that Gabonese citizens cannot obtain medical masks, the government has recommended that they instead wear “alternative masks.” Many tailor shops in Gabon and elsewhere have begun making cloth masks, which are less effective but which nonetheless slow the spread of the coronavirus.

On Monday, the government of Chad had also decreed the mandatory wearing of masks on its territory, before rescinding its order the next day since masks are not available in Chad. Cameroon, one of the worst-hit African countries, with 1,163 cases and 43 deaths, had already adopted this measure last Thursday.

The explosion of COVID-19 cases and the recurring danger of Ebola, a highly contagious and lethal virus, underscore the enormous health dangers facing this region and the necessity of international coordination to ensure that necessary resources and treatments are available. This intervention will require the political mobilization of the working class in struggle, including to oppose renewed armed conflict and the maneuvers of the imperialist powers.

For a quarter century, the DRC has been torn apart by wars in which some 200 armed groups are fighting each other. It is currently the country that has seen the bloodiest war since World War II, with over 5 million dead. The DRC was the center of a regional war that lasted from 1996-1997 and again from 1998 to 2003, when various local and ethnic conflicts were poisoned by interimperialist rivalry between Washington and Paris—conflicts whose consequences still last today.

In 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a primarily Tutsi force linked to US interests, invaded Rwanda, which was then dominated by a genocidal, ethnic-Hutu regime backed by Paris. The French armed forces carried out Operation Turquoise, which protected the flight of Hutu units west into the DRC, including Interahamwe militias responsible for mass ethnic killings of Tutsis. These ethnic conflicts of the Rwandan war, bound up with US-French rivalries amid the collapse of the Mobutu dictatorship in the DRC, ultimately provoked all-out war across the Congo and the region.

Various regional powers—including Rwanda, Uganda, Angola and Zimbabwe—intervened into the conflict, which had moved from Rwanda to the DRC, creating their own militias. This prolonged the conflict and allowed multinational corporations to pillage Congo’s mineral riches by developing links with the various local militias. This conflict led to a stalemate, in which militias and armies financed themselves by plundering local resources and terrorizing local populations.

Now, rivalries between Washington, the European imperialist powers, and China—a major economic power targeted by the imperialist powers with propaganda and military threats—again pose a grave danger in Africa.

Beyond armed conflict, the DRC has undergone intense social and political tensions in recent years, starting with the two-year delay of presidential elections by President Joseph Kabila, who had begun moving closer to China. The elections were ultimately held in December 2018. Last year, amid growing rivalries with Beijing, Washington ordered some of its troops to deploy to Gabon, using the DRC situation to justify the deployment.

Félix Tshisekedi, who won the presidential election, was denounced by his opponents and by France, who petitioned to the UN Security Council. Protests broke out, and four people were killed.

Against epidemics, the population of DRC and neighboring regions cannot simply rely on existing health infrastructure, which is insufficient or even nonexistent. Workers and the oppressed rural masses are again facing the bankruptcy of capitalism in Africa. Whereas countries there, and above all the DRC, have vast national wealth, the ruling elites act—in the final analysis—in close collaboration with the imperialist powers, who use armed militias to pillage Congo’s natural wealth and make enormous profits.

Without international coordination to fight COVID-19 and Ebola based on a scientific appraisal of Africa’s health needs, a major health catastrophe is looming. The decisive question is the international political mobilization of the working class. As anger is mounting in the imperialist countries against governments that impose back-to-work orders with contempt for human life, it is essential to mobilize hundreds of billions of euros in health and industrial resources for Africa and to prevent a relapse into a generalized internal war as in the past in the Congo.

Unrest spreads in France in response to police brutality

Will Morrow

Tuesday evening saw the fourth successive night in France of escalating youth protests and clashes with riot police in the suburbs of Paris and other major cities.

The unrest was immediately triggered by the latest act of police brutality. On Saturday night, a police officer in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, a town in the Hauts-de-Seine department just north of Paris, opened his car door as a 30-year-old motorcyclist passed. The young man suffered a badly broken leg after the incident and remains in hospital.

Video showing the victim spread rapidly on social media, alongside testimony from numerous witnesses indicating the policeman had intentionally opened the door in the motorcycle’s path. The police car was unmarked, and police have acknowledged they did not use their sirens or lights, while also admitting they were trying to stop the victim.

Anis Kesraoui, a friend of the victim’s family, told France Television, “The police car…was not marked ‘police,’ and it was black. The car was stopped at the lights and the bike came up from down there. And here, he [the policeman] deliberately opened the door.” He added, “We can see on the video that the impact is on the interior of the door and not the exterior.”

Other residents who were present at the scene said the officer smelled of alcohol. According to Le Monde, he was a ranked commissioner, of which there are approximately 1,200 in France and over 100 in the Paris region.

The police account has shifted. As documented by Libération, an initial police report claimed the officer was standing outside his car and attempted to stop the motorcyclist, who refused and then crashed as he attempted to escape. This claim appears to have been dropped—later accounts admitted the officer was inside his vehicle when the door was opened.

The victim is suing the police for intentional violence. His lawyer, Stéphane Gas, has stated that “my client was returning from his house and the police gave no sign of their presence; they did not even turn on their police light, and there was therefore no refusal to obey police instructions.” He told Libération, “My client is firm on this point. He said: ‘There is no question, I had the right to pass, the door was closed and was opened at the moment I passed by the car. There was no officer outside.’”

Heavily armed police have arrested dozens of youth in clashes over the last four nights, with the youth responding with fireworks and throwing rocks. Although the clashes began in Ville-la-Garenne, they have spread to other areas in the neighboring Seine-Saint-Denis region, to Nanterre, northwest of Paris, and last night to other cities, including outside Lyon.

France has seen repeated outbreaks of urban revolts in the impoverished suburbs around its major cities. In October 2005, two youth were killed while fleeing from police in the banlieues outside Paris, igniting riots over inequality, poverty and relentless police harassment and violence, disturbances that were brutally suppressed by riot police. The Sarkozy government enacted a state of emergency nationally and arrested more than 2,800 people over the course of several weeks.

The latest act of wanton police brutality comes on top of the conditions of inequality that have only worsened since 2005, as the financial aristocracy in France has siphoned off ever-greater sums of wealth while social programs and decent-paying jobs have been destroyed.

In the Seine-Saint-Denis region, the unemployment rate is more than double the national average and more than one in three 15- to 24-year-olds are unemployed.

These conditions have only been exacerbated by the Macron administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Seine-Saint-Denis and areas of Hauts-de-Seine have been among the hardest hit by the pandemic. The most recently available government data, for March 13 to April 6, reveal that—after the eastern region of France where the coronavirus was first concentrated—Seine-Saint-Denis has seen the largest increase in mortality over last year of any department in the country, 101 percent.

Seine-Saint-Denis has just 0.5 hospital beds per 10,000 inhabitants, approximately one third the percentage in Paris proper, which itself has an entirely inadequate supply of beds that has rapidly been overwhelmed by the pandemic.

Because of the Macron administration’s refusal to provide significant support, the lockdown has been an economic and social disaster for broad sections of workers and youth. They are confined in cramped living quarters, with family members on top of one another and unable to go outside. Moreover, working class families are now also unable to access vital subsidized school lunch programs where children eat for €1 per day.

Lines for free food distribution in the Seine-Saint-Denis area over the past week have grown continuously and now stretch for hundreds of meters.

A report in Le Parisien on Tuesday focused on one local charity distributing food to confined families in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, where Saturday’s police violence occurred. A 40-year-old mother, whose husband works as a trash collector and is now dependent on charity to feed her children, said: “The canteen cost us less than 100 euros per month to feed our three children. The food budget has exploded with the confinement. We have already spent 500 euros and we are only halfway through the month.”

Other workers described combining lunch and dinner or skipping meals entirely so that their children could eat. “Before, I volunteered in food distributions,” said Soumaya, “and now I’ve become a recipient.”

In his speech on Monday last week, President Emmanuel Macron announced an insulting one-off payment to the most impoverished families of €150 per child. Four days later, the government signed into law a payment of €20 billion (US$21.6 billion) to the largest French corporations, including Renault and Airbus.

All the official parties of France are implicated in the social catastrophe laid bare by the pandemic and that lies behind the youth rebellions: from the Socialist Party (PS) which has participated in decades of austerity, slashing essential health and social services to the bone, to the trade unions and their pseudo-left allies such as the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), who have sabotaged any independent struggle by the working class and propped up the PS.

The police crackdown on the protests is a function of the extreme fear in the ruling class of social revolution. Within ruling circles, the central element in plans for “de-confinement” is preparation for a police-state crackdown against an inevitable eruption of opposition to the reactionary policies of the ruling class.

An article published by Le Parisien on April 11, headlined, “Confinement: Why the ‘days after’ worry the intelligence agencies,” cites internal documents produced by the Central Service of Territorial Surveillance (SCRT) on April 7, 8 and 9. The documents observe: “The ‘day after’ is a theme that is strongly mobilizing protest movements. The confinement does not permit broad masses to express themselves, but anger is not waning, and the [government] management of the crisis, which has been highly criticized, is encouraging opposition.”

The Gala website cited an unnamed ministry adviser on Friday asserting that “there will be a dégagiste [demands for the downfall of the government] movement after the crisis. It’s the end of all of us.” The term dégager (resign) was a main slogan of the Tunisian revolution of 2011.

Rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea halted

Martin Kreickenbaum

For twelve days earlier this month, the rescue ship Alan Kurdi, with 150 refugees on board, waited for permission to land at a European port. This is like a scene from the 1930s, when Jews fleeing Hitler were denied safe haven by all the great powers.

In a cynical act, Malta and Italy declared their own ports unsafe because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only last Friday were the refugees and crew of the Alan Kurdi, a German vessel, transferred to an Italian ferry, where they will be tested for coronavirus and spend a fortnight in quarantine.

The Alan Kurdi rescued 150 refugees from two wooden boats on April 6, but the ship was then prevented from entering a European port. The situation on board the vessel, which was not designed to accommodate so many people over such a long period of time, became increasingly acute.

Syrian and Iraqi refugees from Turkey arrive at Skala Sykamineas on the island of Lesbos where they are rescued by volunteers of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, October 30, 2015 (Source: Ggia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The rescuing of the refugees itself had been extremely dramatic. On the morning of April 6, the Alan Kurdi, under Captain Bärbel Beuse, rushed to a wooden boat in international waters off the coast of Libya, with 68 refugees on board. During the rescue, a speedboat belonging to the self-proclaimed European Union (EU)-backed Libyan coast guard turned up. Without any warning, the Libyans fired into the air, and half the refugees jumped into the water in panic, without life jackets. The crew of the Alan Kurdi threw all available life-saving equipment into the sea, but the refugees could only be plucked from the water when the Libyan coast guard boat pulled away.

During this operation, the Alan Kurdi received notice of another maritime emergency further north. There, 82 refugees in another wooden boat were in distress. The offshore supply ship Asso Ventinove, which arrived at the scene several hours before the Alan Kurdi, refused to mount any rescue operation, claiming it had to stand ready for a possible accident on an oil rig. Therefore, the rescue ship evacuated this boat and asked the Italian authorities for permission to land at a safe harbour with the 150 refugees on board.

The Alan Kurdi set course for the waters north of the Sicilian port of Palermo, but was forbidden from landing. On April 8, the Italian government issued a new decree, stating that the country’s ports were not safe havens for people rescued at sea by non-Italian flagged vessels during the coronavirus emergency. An almost identical decree had previously been adopted by the Maltese government. Malta and Italy also made it clear that they would not allow rescue vessels to land even if the distribution of refugees to other EU states had been agreed beforehand.

The reason given was that it would no longer be possible to help migrants, as the police and military were concentrating their resources on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, medical care could no longer be guaranteed, as the health system was already overburdened with the care of those suffering from COVID-19.

This argument cynically pits human life against human life. The suffering of the victims of the coronavirus crisis should not be the reason for “refusing help to those who are not in danger of suffocating in an intensive care bed, but of drowning,” according to a joint statement by Médecins sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders], SOS Méditerranée, Sea Watch and Open Arms.

Nevertheless, the countries bordering the Mediterranean have stopped providing all aid to refugees in distress at sea. They are also supported in this by the German federal government. The German Interior Ministry, headed by Horst Seehofer, has called on all refugee aid organisations in the Mediterranean to halt their sea rescue operations. “In view of the current difficult situation, we therefore appeal to you not to begin any voyages at present and to recall ships that have already set sail,” the head of the ministry’s Migration Department wrote to Sea-Eye, among others.

The chairman of Sea-Eye, Gorden Isler, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung, “These are the same politicians who have been stressing for weeks that those affected by the corona crisis must accept all restrictions on freedom, because the aim is to save lives—and every single life is precious. On the other hand, they say we should stop the rescue work? It’s like saying, ‘Let people die.’”

But that is precisely the aim and slogan of the European governments.

In the week before Easter, according to information from the aid organisation Watch the Med—Alarmphone, as a result of better weather and the worsening situation in Libyan refugee and internment camps, more than 2,000 refugees set off for Europe in around 20 vessels, with ten of them needing assistance.

The Alan Kurdi was initially denied urgently needed drinking water, food, and fuel. On April 12, the crew was promised that an Italian quarantine ship would receive the rescued refugees within a few hours. But it was not for another five days that the ship even set sail.

Due to the tense situation on board the Alan Kurdi, the cramped conditions and uncertainty, conflicts became more and more frequent. On Wednesday, a refugee who had been held for months in a Libyan internment camp and had experienced terrible violence tried to slit his wrists. He and his two cousins were taken aboard boats belonging to the Italian coast guard.

In the process, other refugees threatened to throw themselves into the sea. “People are totally desperate and have been held on the Alan Kurdi for ten days. They indicated that they wanted to jump into the water to reach the Italian boats. They could hardly be calmed down,” said Jan Ribbeck, head of operations at Sea-Eye.

The Spanish-flagged Aita Mari, with 47 refugees on board, is now also not being allowed to enter port.

Not only are the authorities refusing to allow rescue vessels to enter their ports, they have also virtually stopped all sea rescue operations themselves, with terrible consequences for the refugees.

The aid organisation Alarmphone received distress calls from four rubber dinghies packed with refugees during the night of April 9-10. While two boats were still able to reach the Sicilian coast under their own power, and one was evacuated by the Spanish Aita Mari, there was no trace of the last boat for days. While the Italian and Maltese coast guards took no action, the self-proclaimed Libyan coast guard declared that they “cannot carry out any rescue operations at present because they do not have any face masks.”

The situation on board one inflatable vessel, packed with 63 refugees, was deteriorating rapidly. Water was coming in; children were screaming from thirst. Only on April 14, four days after the first distress alert, when the inflatable boat finally drifted into the Maltese sea rescue zone, did the Maltese authorities give the order to look for the boat. The Portuguese cargo ship Ivan stopped a mile away from the dinghy and observed the further developments. However, due to its size and the high swell, the Ivan was unable to carry out a rescue operation itself.

Seven refugees jumped desperately into the sea to get to the cargo ship. All seven drowned. Hours later, the remaining 56 refugees were picked up by a fishing boat, which illegally returned them to Libya. Five refugees did not survive the journey and died of hunger and dehydration.

In Libya, the fighting between the militias of the internationally recognised government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and Gen. Khalifa Haftar continues unabated. Artillery fire is commonplace in Tripoli and sometimes so heavy that 280 refugees who had been picked up by the self-appointed Libyan coast guard could not be brought ashore.

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic is making the situation of refugees even more difficult. Many international aid organisations have withdrawn from Libya. Refugees report that the supply of food and drinking water for them has collapsed.

In this situation, to halt sea rescues and attempt to send stricken refugees to their certain deaths is a crime. Maltese military personnel are even said to have deliberately tried to kill migrants. The 70 refugees on board a rubber dinghy reported that the Maltese naval speedboat P52 stopped at the marooned people, but only to cut the cables of the engine and to say, “We’ll let you die here. None of you will get to Malta.” Only hours later were they rescued and taken to Valletta.

“The situation is the worst I’ve experienced in all these years,” said Britta Rabe, a member of the Alarmphone staff, in an interview with the daily Die Welt on Tuesday. “The coast guards in Italy, Malta and Libya are no longer saving anyone. No one who gets into distress at sea will be helped.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has thus become a wretched and dishonest excuse to halt aid to refugees and to abolish the fundamental right to asylum in the European Union. The chairman of the rescue organisation Sea-Eye rightly stated, “It is unacceptable that rescue packages worth billions are being made available for industry, but at the same time, it is claimed that there are no resources to protect migrants. Europe has created a situation where humanitarian disasters are played off against each other.”

European Union summit argues over corona bonds

Peter Schwarz

The European Union (EU) and its member states have already mobilised €3.4 trillion to cover the economic losses triggered by the coronavirus, according to the calculations of the European Commission. This sum almost amounts to Germany’s annual gross domestic product and about one quarter of the EU’s total GDP. In the opinion of the EU Commission, at least another €1 trillion will be required to revive the economy.

Only a tiny fraction of these vast sums are being directed to lessen the medical and social crisis caused by the pandemic, which with 1.2 million cases and over 110,000 deaths in Europe remains ahead of the United States, the worst affected country in the world. The overwhelming majority of the money is flowing directly into the accounts of the big banks, major corporations and the super-rich.

By the end of this year, the European Central Bank (ECB) will purchase €700 billion of state and private bonds. Of the €756 billion emergency bailout adopted by the German government in March, €600 billion is going directly to the major corporations. The wealth of the world’s richest 500 people, which declined at the beginning of the crisis, has risen by 20 percent since March 23, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. “The wealth gap that currently exists will only increase with what is happening,” commented a finance expert.

A bitter struggle is raging between the EU member states over how the trillions should be distributed and who will pay for it. The conflict has dominated preparations for the EU summit taking place today via video conference. While Germany, with the support of several wealthy northern European states, is attempting to strengthen its economic and political control over the EU, France, Italy and other southern European countries fear being left behind.

The dispute threatens to tear apart the EU, which is already heading towards a sharp break with Britain. The chances of an orderly Brexit being concluded at the end of the year are decreasing with every passing day.

In the struggle over the multi-trillion coronavirus bailout, vile nationalism is being promoted on all sides, recalling the two world wars of the last century. Even the representatives of the ruling class who advocate holding the EU together no longer do so by invoking the claim that it is a project for peace. Instead, they argue that Europe can only stand up to the United States, China and Russia, and pursue its imperialist interests on the world stage, if it sticks together.

As at the last EU summit two weeks ago, the main issue in dispute are the so-called “coronabonds.” Italy in particular is insisting that it is not enough for loans to be made available from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), European Investment Bank (EIB) and other EU institutions, which would all be tied to tough regulations and have to be paid back. Instead, Rome is calling for joint bonds for which all EU states would bear joint liability.

Economists warn that a failure to follow this approach will result in Italy’s state debt rising from its current level of 135 percent of GDP to 160 percent by the end of the year, forcing the country into state bankruptcy. Since Italy uses the euro and does not have its own currency, it would not be able to get through the crisis by printing money and using other inflationary measures.

The German government opposes coronabonds by arguing that EU treaties do not countenance a transfer of debt. Despite the common currency, each EU state is responsible for its own debt.

Germany already exploited the 2008 economic crisis to expand its economic hegemony. While Italy, Greece and other countries were forced to impose sweeping austerity measures, which decimated the living standards of the working class and led to an increase in state debt, Germany enjoyed budget surpluses and reduced government debt to 62 percent of GDP. The German bourgeoisie now wants to further extend this advantage.

Giuseppe Conte is stoking nationalism with the claim that Italy was left to deal with the coronavirus crisis alone. The Italian Prime Minister, who owes his post to the Five Star Movement and the far-right Lega and now leads a coalition of the Five Star Movement and social democrats, has sought to force the hand of his counterparts by threatening a return to power of the anti-EU Lega. According to recent polls, 49 percent of the population in the traditionally EU friendly country would now vote to leave the bloc.

At the same time, Conte has insisted that not a single German euro would be used to pay for Italian debt. He has boasted of his ruthless austerity policies, which have had devastating consequences for the working class. Apart from 2009, “no Italian government in the past 22 years spent more money than what came in,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The high indebtedness is the legacy of the lira era, for which Italy has to pay high interest rates, he added.

Conte is backed by Emmanuel Macron, who demanded in a Financial Times interview more “European solidarity” from Germany. “We need financial transfers and solidarity for Europe to remain together,” said the French President. Otherwise, the economic consequences of the pandemic threaten to bring populists to power across Europe. Now is “the moment of truth where the issue is posed, is the EU a political project or just a marketplace.”

Similar sentiments exist within sections of the German bourgeoisie. They argue that a further weakening of the EU would also undermine Germany’s imperialist interests on a global scale.

In an article on 5 April, former foreign ministers Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrats) and Joschka Fischer (Greens) warned that Russia and China would profit from a failure of the EU. Germany must therefore “now show its readiness to lead in Europe.” According to the two former Foreign Ministers, “If we don’t do that, Europe will not realise its economic sovereignty, but will always be dependent when it comes down to business on the policy of the dollar region.”

A possible compromise prepared by German EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen appears likely at today’s summit. According to this, there will be no coronabonds, but reconstruction programmes will be funded through the EU’s 2021–27 budget, which is currently under discussion. Sums ranging from €500 billion to €1.5 trillion are being considered.

But even if the heads of government agree to this, which is by no means assured, the conflicts within the EU would not be resolved. In the final analysis, they are rooted in the impossibility of uniting Europe on a capitalist basis. The private ownership of the means of production and the struggle of powerful monopolies for market share and profits leads inevitably under conditions of crisis to an intensification of the class struggle and nationalist conflict. to this, the bourgeoisie knows only one answer: nationalism, war and dictatorship.

The only way to prevent a repetition of the catastrophe of the 20th century is through the unification of the European working class in struggle against capitalism and for the united socialist states of Europe.

Britain’s coronavirus testing fiasco is a product of herd immunity strategy

Thomas Scripps

Half of the UK’s woefully inadequate COVID-19 testing capacity is going unused, while thousands of virus tests and millions of antibody tests have proved unreliable.

The government claims to have established a daily testing capacity of 40,000 but only half that number is being carried out. Health Secretary Matt Hancock sought to blame the lack of testing on “staff” that “haven’t wanted to come forward.”

In fact, the government is solely to blame for the ongoing catastrophe.

Britain’s 29 regional drive-through testing centres are not located outside or even near hospitals or town centres. Instead they are in city suburbs, off motorways and at airports. This means that those hoping to be tested cannot use public transport or be driven by anyone other than members of their household. There are numerous reports of health care workers having to drive hundreds of miles to reach their nearest site.

A National Health Service worker is tested by a soldier for COVID-19 at a drive-through testing centre in London London. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Geographical problems are combined with other strict limitations. Testing is by appointment only and limited to those who have already been self-isolating at home. Tests must be done within three days of symptoms first showing. Only last Friday were testing centres opened to firefighters, prison officers, the police, and the judiciary, as well as National Health Service (NHS) staff.

The British government’s “testing strategy” has never been based on organising the mass manufacture and distribution of tests throughout the population—beginning with health care and other frontline workers. They have instead been focused on the mass manufacture and distribution of lies.

An important chronology of the UK’s coronavirus response produced by the Byline Times testifies to this reality.

On March 11, NHS England announced plans to increase the rate of testing to 10,000 tests a day. One week later, Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to increase testing to 25,000 a day. At that time, the daily rate was roughly 4,000.

Johnson continued to pull numbers out of thin air, which he knew full well were not going to be achieved. On March 25, he told a press conference, “We are going up from 5,000 to 10,000 tests per day, to 25,000, hopefully very soon up to 250,000 per day.”

In the previous 24 hours, the UK had carried out just 6,583 tests. It had at this time still failed to reach for a single day the original daily target of 10,000—almost a month after the first death in the UK on February 28.

On April 2, Hancock announced that 100,000 tests would be being carried out daily by the end of the month. Three days later, just 13,069 tests were carried out. Two days ago, on April 21, only 22,814 tests were performed—the highest total so far.

Britain is currently ranked 15th out of the 17 countries (with available data) with the worst epidemics for the number of tests per thousand population. At 5.54 per thousand, the UK ranks only above Peru and India.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the chronic lack of testing is that the Johnson government is still set on imposing its policy of herd immunity—through the mass infection of millions of people.

Local councils employ 5,000 environmental health workers with experience in contact tracing, which is crucial to breaking the links of transmission of viruses in the early stages of an epidemic. This critical resource was never deployed. Instead, Public Health England (PHE) made use of just under 300 staff until mid-March, when they abandoned contact tracing altogether.

On March 12, the government switched from a claimed policy of testing every possible case to only testing cases in hospitals. This policy directly contributed to the horrific situation in the UK’s care homes—where thousands of mainly elderly people have died—and to the scores of deaths among key workers.

On April 1, when just 2,000 out of 500,000 frontline NHS workers had been tested, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam admitted to ITV News that testing “is a bit of a side issue to be truthful with you.”

In fact, according to a Daily Telegraph report Wednesday, Public Health England have told labs to stop using the department’s original test and switch to a commercial test. A PHE memo dated April 11 referred to “quality assurance difficulties”—which means that thousands of NHS workers could have been sent back to work with a false negative, while still infected and infectious. The Daily Mail noted yesterday, “NHS labs will continue to use the method but must double check all uncertain results until they can switch to commercial tests.”

Allan Wilson, president of the Institute of Biomedical Science, spoke to Wired about the government’s approach to expanding testing capacity: “There seems no coordination of this ... in fact it seems almost uncoordinated.

“There’s a lab I know in England that had staff in over the [Easter] weekend making DIY swab test kits, because they’d run out.”

Another NHS lab in Northern Ireland had to crowdfund £112,000 to purchase a DNA purification machine which will quintuple their ability to process tests.

Several experts told the Guardian this week that the testing which is currently being carried out is not necessarily helpful from a public health perspective. Professor Sheila Bird, a former member of the Medical Research Council at the University of Cambridge, explained that the failure to break down the numbers by tests of hospital patients, critical workers and family members of critical workers made it impossible to accurately assess the outbreak in the UK.

While ignoring the urgent advice of medical professionals to test, quarantine and contact trace, the government jumped ahead of scientific advice as it advocated a “game changer” antibody test. This was advanced as a “magic bullet” solution which could be used to justify a rapid return to work and shore up the profits of big business. The government admitted earlier this month that it had ordered 17.5 million antibody testing kits, none of which were accurate enough for use. At least 3.5 million unreliable tests have been paid for, with £16 million reportedly given for an order of 2 million kits from China.

Recent research from the UK’s National Covid Testing Scientific Advisory Panel found that the performance of home antibody tests “is inadequate for most individual patient applications.”

Even if a highly accurate test were to be found, on the basis of several preliminary studies, the World Health Organisation estimates that “not more than 2-3 percent” of the global population have been infected with the virus—rising to perhaps 14 percent in Germany and France. Even a small percentage of false positives (informing people who have not had the virus that they have) would therefore give a false and dangerous “all clear” to huge numbers of people.

There is nowhere near sufficient data to prove that these tests would confirm a person’s immunity to reinfection by the virus. Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said April 17, “Right now, we have no evidence that the use of a serological test can show that an individual has immunity or is protected from reinfection.”

With Boris Johnson still ensconced at the prime minister’s country residence, Chequers, after nearly dying of COVID-19, Britain’s ruling elite are relying on former Labour prime minister Tony Blair to argue that these concerns should not get in the way of orchestrating a return to work. He told “Good Morning Britain” yesterday, “Even if there is some inaccuracy, I still think the antibody test is a vital part of what we’re trying to do.”

His Institute for Global Change has published a strategy for reopening the economy with a politically manageable death rate, while new Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer continues to press the government for a lockdown “exit strategy.”

World Food Programme warns: COVID-19 pandemic will cause “famines of biblical proportions”

Jean Shaoul

The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) warned Tuesday that without urgent action and funding, hundreds of millions of people will face starvation and millions could die as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

WFP Executive Director David Beasley told the UN Security Council that in addition to the threat to health posed by the virus, the world faces “multiple famines of biblical proportions within a few short months,” which could result in 300,000 deaths per day—a “hunger pandemic.”

Beasley said that even before the outbreak, the world was “facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II” this year due to many factors. He cited the wars in Syria and Yemen, the crisis in South Sudan and locust swarms across East Africa. He said that coupled with the coronavirus outbreak, famine threatened about three dozen nations.

According to the WFP’s “2020 Global Report on Food Crises” released Monday, 135 million people around the world were already threatened with starvation. Beasley said that as the virus spreads, “an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people.”

Boxes of food are distributed by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, at a drive thru distribution in downtown Pittsburgh, 10 April, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar]

The regions suffering the most in 2019 were Africa (73 million people “in crisis or worse”) and the Middle East and Asia (43 million people), beset not only with poverty, but also with conflicts and the impact of natural disasters, economic crises and climate change, with the worst locust swarms in decades in East Africa putting 70 million people at risk.

Beasley pointed out that there are already 821 million food-insecure people in the world, a record number. “If we don’t prepare and act now to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade,” he warned, the result could be a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

The 10 worst affected countries are Yemen (15.9 million people “in crisis or worse”), Democratic Republic of the Congo (15.6 million), Afghanistan (11.3 million), Venezuela (9.3 million), Ethiopia (8 million), South Sudan (7 million), Syria (6.6 million), Sudan (5.9 million) northeast Nigeria (5 million) and Haiti (3.7 million). All of these countries are the victims of more than a century of imperialist oppression and exploitation that continues to the present. Most, if not all, continue to suffer from US-led military interventions, economic sanctions or political intrigues that have had devastating social consequences.

In the 55 food-crisis countries that are the focus of the report, a staggering 75 million children are stunted and 17 million suffer from wasting. Beasley said, “Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the spectre of famine a very real and dangerous possibility.”

African countries affected by conflicts are particularly at risk, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria and South Sudan, as well as countries hosting large numbers of refugees such as Lebanon and Uganda.

More than half the population of Yemen and South Sudan, which have endured years of wars, already face acute food shortages even before the virus reaches them. At least 14 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine, while 80 percent of the country’s 24 million people rely on food aid.

Save the Children estimated last year that at least 75,000 Yemeni children under the age of five have starved to death since the onset of the Saudi-led and US-backed war. Nearly 3.6 million people have been displaced by the conflict.

In South Sudan, there are more than five million people facing starvation and reliant on food aid to survive, and 1.7 million women and children are acutely malnourished.

More than 30 of the world’s poorest countries could experience widespread famine and in 10 of these countries, there are already more than one million people on the brink of starvation.

The WFP said that lockdown measures in the poorest countries, with fragile health care systems and crowded and unsanitary living conditions, would not suffice to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, while depriving millions of workers of an already meagre livelihood and leading to an economic and humanitarian disaster. The near global restrictions on all but essential work and travel are affecting farm workers and disrupting supply chains.

Millions of farmers in Africa and other low-income countries, already facing high levels of food insecurity, are at risk of not being able to work their land and produce food. Of the 257 million hungry people in Africa, most live in rural areas.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa provides a stark example of what is at stake. Small farmers were unable to work their land, sell their products or buy seeds and other essential inputs, leaving more than 40 percent of the agricultural land uncultivated.

The WFP also noted that many of the poorest countries have been hard hit by the collapse of the travel and tourism sectors, with villages in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, for example, almost entirely dependent on tourists and hikers for survival. Others will suffer from the catastrophic fall in remittances (up to 20 percent, according to the World Bank), as migrant workers are furloughed or laid off.

This will affect conflict-torn states such as Somalia, Haiti and South Sudan, and small island nations such as Tonga, with remittances sometimes accounting for more than 30 percent of gross domestic product, as well as larger states such as India, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria and the Philippines, where remittances have become a crucial source of external financing. Flows to sub-Saharan Africa are predicted to fall by 23 percent.

Those particularly at risk include refugees and displaced people living in camps and settlements in cities, as well as the elderly, young children, pregnant and lactating women, and the disabled.

For those whose lives already hang by a thread, the economic impact of the pandemic will push them over the edge. Already there have been reports of food hoarding and price gouging in several sub-Saharan African countries, making food both scarce and unaffordable for those most in need. Anger over food shortages has triggered violent protests across South Africa in the last two weeks, while protests have also started in Lebanon.

In northeast Nigeria, almost three million people are already facing hunger and 440,000 children under five are severely malnourished due to the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency. The risk of hunger is already high in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, while in the Philippines police are enforcing lockdowns at the point of a gun and the government is preparing for a military lockdown as unrest mounts.

In the face of this global catastrophe, Beasley urged the UN Security Council to come forward with a measly $2 billion of aid already pledged but not delivered. He warned that another $350 million was needed just to set up the logistics network to get food and medical supplies—including personal protective equipment—to where it was needed.

This pathetic plea will fall on deaf ears. These sums are a tiny fraction of the trillions the US, the European and other imperialist powers are pouring into tax-dodging corporations and financial institutions to keep them afloat. The only spending the major powers will allocate in relation to the oppressed nations will be to strengthen their military forces for colonial-style interventions to rob these countries of their natural resources and police rising social discontent among workers and poor farmers.

If millions of lives are to be saved in the poorest countries of the world, workers everywhere must take up the struggle to end capitalism and establish a global socialist system based on planned production for need. The development of a socialist political movement of the working class directed against the ruling classes in the imperialist centres and their local agents in the oppressed nations is the only way that the world’s most vulnerable people can be protected against the terrible impact of the pandemic.

Africa-China Reporting Project Public health reporting grants 2020

Application Deadline: 30th April 2020

About the Award: The Project provides capacity building and facilitation in the form of reporting grants, workshops and other opportunities for journalists to investigate complex dynamics and uncover untold stories. Journalists are encouraged to emphasize on-the-ground impact and perspectives to illustrate how the lives of Africa’s people are changing amid the comprehensive phenomenon of Africa-China interactions.
In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing impact in Africa, the Project invites journalists to submit proposals investigating current ground-level responses, capacity, successes/failures, shortcomings, services and collaborations in African countries, communities and organisations.
The following are potential focus areas to guide applicants:

• Current state of preparedness in Africa for the COVID-19 epidemic
• Existing state of public/private health services and programmes in Africa and expected requirements to deal with extreme crises and pandemics such as COVID-19
• Current interaction, exchange and engagement between African and Chinese or foreign health professionals, practitioners, companies and institutions. Application in Africa of knowledge and successful measures used to fight the pandemic in China and elsewhere
• Use of Chinese and other foreign health technology in Africa
• Inspiring role models, humanitarians, innovators and advocates in the current climate of the African public health sector
• Investigations of xenophobia and stigma inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health issues
• Local community health solutions, capacity and measures in African countries
• Application of public health best practices in Africa
• Public health data and measuring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
• The impact of media coverage on pandemics and best practices for journalists for covering pandemics
• The economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Lessons for combating the COVID-19 pandemic from previous pandemics and diseases

These are suggested topics but journalists can also pursue others, as long as the focus is within the broad Africa-China public health framework.

Type:  Grants

Eligibility:  Applications are open to all journalists who present Africa-focused proposals. Applicants need not necessarily have previous reporting experience in this area.

Number of Awards:  Not specified

How to Apply: Please address an email with the heading APPLICATION: PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTING GRANT and containing the following items (in attachments in MS Word or PDF formats) to ACRPapplications@gmail.com by no later than 30 April 2020:

• Applicant CV including list of previous reporting
• Proposal for story to be investigated, with a clear proposed headline at the start and a brief report of WHAT will be investigated and HOW, with a methodology for how and where the investigation will be undertaken
• An indication of where the investigation will be published
• A detailed budget with specific line items totalling as much as US$1,500

For any further questions please contact the Project team at ACRPcontact@gmail.com.

Visit Award Webpage for Details